Thus both MacDougall and his children had thrived and developed on their wealth. Mrs. MacDougall, perhaps, had been the sacrifice. She remained a tall, thin, pale, tired-looking woman with large hands that were a record of toil. She laboured at her new social duties and “pleasures” in exactly the same spirit that she had formerly laboured at the wash tub. MacDougall’s offices now occupied all of the ground floor of a large new building which he had built. Like everything else of his authorship this building represented a determined effort to lend the town an air of Eastern elegance. It was finished in an imitation of white marble and the offices had large plate glass windows which bore in gilt letters the legend: “MacDougall Land and Cattle Company, Inc.” Within, half a dozen girls in glass cages could be seen working at typewriters and adding machines, while a cashier occupied a little office of his own with a large safe at his back, a little brass grating in front of him, and a revolver visible not far from his right hand. The creator of this magnificence sat behind a glasstop desk at the far end of a large and sunny office with a bare and slippery floor. Many a Mexican beggar for mercy, with a mortgage on his home, had walked across this forbidding expanse of polished hardwood toward the big man with the merciless eye, as fearfully as ever a _peon_, sentenced to forty lashes and salt in his wounds, approached the seat of his owner to plead for a whole skin. Truly, the weak can but change masters. This morning MacDougall was all affability. As he stood up behind his desk, clad in a light grey suit, large and ruddy, radiant of health and prosperity, he was impressive, almost splendid. Only the eyes, small and closeset, revealed the worried and calculating spirit of the man. “Mr. Delcasar,” he said when they had shaken hands and sat down, “I am glad to welcome you to this office, and I hope to see you here many times more. I will not waste time, for we are both busy men. I asked you to come here because I want to suggest a sort of informal partnership between us, such as I had with your late uncle, one of my best friends. I believe my plan will be for the best interests of both of us.… I suppose you know about what the arrangement was between the Don and myself?” “No; not in detail,” Ramon confessed. He felt MacDougall’s power at once. Facing the man was a different matter from planning an interview with him when alone. But he retained sense enough to let MacDougall do the talking. “Have a cigar,” the great man continued, full of sweetness, pushing a large and fragrant box of perfectos across the desk. “I will outline the situation to you briefly, as I see it.” Nothing could have seemed more frank and friendly than his manner.